Sherry Chandler

A. E. Stallings

Annie Finch, in her essay, “The Body of Poetry,” says:

In contemporary free verse anecdotal poetry, the mode which Ron Silliman, following Edgar Allan Poe, has called “the school of quietude,” the apparent sincerity of the individual self, or soul, becomes the central transcendent poetic criterion, a site of spiritual fetishism. All other factors—form, diction, image, subject, tone—are subsumed in the service of this effect.

One corollary to such a criterion is the feeling that poetry must be in some way touching, that what makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck is the depth of feeling or horrible honesty the poet expresses. Poetry is about feeling, the occasion of poetry one of pain and loss.

As one who has judged a fair number of amateur poetry contests, I can attest that such a poetic can lead to some pretty painful writing that calls itself poetry.

A. E. Stallings is a poet who does not forget what Annie Finch calls “the surprising artifices of poetry�s body” — rhyme and repetition. Stallings has been taken to task for this interest, as in this 2006 review from the blog PoemShape:

One wonders if there are not more profound or deeper emotional experiences she is not sharing or if the formality of her poetry is a kind of barrier. The risk in formal poetry is in letting the formality become the matter of the poem, intentionally or otherwise.

Here we see the assumption full-blown that a poem must be deep and its meaning must transcend its form.

Here is Joan Houlihan’s review in Perihelion. Houlihan uses an appropriate metaphor for us Kentuckians, who have just celebrated Derby week:

Reading A.E. Stallings is like watching a thoroughbred horse win the race in spite of a weighted saddle. Magnificent horse, exciting race�but the handicap is a constant distraction, often becoming, itself, the focus. Among her formalist peers, Stallings is a clear winner. Her intellect, substantive subject matter (often drawn from deep familiarity with and love of the classics), the rich and interesting diction of her poems and their varied phrasings, frequently cohere in this collection around genuine passion and something to say. These poems have legs.

It is curious then, that Stallings seems wedded to end-rhyming, mainly in true rhyme, no matter what the poem might otherwise do. Hapax provokes a question: what is the purpose of rhyme?

Lately I’ve been reading the book that figures in the quoted reviews: Hapax (Triquarterly Books, 2006). A hapax legomenon, shortened to hapax, is a word or form that occurs only once in either the written record of a language, the works of an author, or in a single text. I never quite figured out the significance of the title for this collection, unless it is that the collection, her second, is a miscellany, a collection of singular poems that don’t build to a theme. Or perhaps because, as Steffan Horstman says in his review of this book [PDF} in Contemporary Rhyme (Vol 4, 2007):

She typically will not attempt to interlace various subjects within individual poems, but isolates moments which are examined with a jeweller�s attention.

Or perhaps again as Eric McHenry and Joel Brouwer would have it in the NYTimes:

What’s most appealing in Stallings’s poems, then, is a sense of hapaxity � an imaginative empathy with those whose lone moment is long gone,

As you have no doubt gathered, one area in which Stallings likes to play is Greek mythology. She studied Classics at the University of Georgia and she lives in Greece, so she has the intimacy with the material necessary to use it effectively, both with serious and comic intent. So she can write “XII Klassikal Lynmaeryx”

viii

Cried Theseus, “I’m at a loss!
Perplexed by this puzzle. and cross!”
                  “You can solve it! Don’t whine,”
                  Ariadne said, “twine
Does the trick. In a pinch, dental floss.”

And “Song for the Women Poets,” a poem that may seem to begin with comic intent but which ends in dark blessing or bright curse:

Sing, sing, because you can.
Descend in murk and pitch,
Double-talk the ferryman
and three-throated bitch.

Sing before the king and queen,
Make the grave to grieve,
Till Persephone weeps kerosene
And wipes it on her sleeve.

. . .

And part of you leaves Tartarus,
But part stays there to dwell—
You who are both Orpheus
And She he left in Hell.

Is form the art for Stallings? Or does form impair the art?

I can’t say.

I read these poems at a very dark time in my life, a time perhaps when I wanted or needed to be moved, wanted a catharsis. So sometimes I found Hapax a little bit empty, maybe a little over-clever. Especially compared to some one like Louise Glück, who in collections like Averno, uses mythology to take a very dark look at loss and death.

On the other hand, sometimes the 50 to 1 horse turns out to be a mudder. And what a celebration then.

I had the pleasure of hearing Stallings read at Georgetown College in October 2007. I recorded my impressions here.